Is anime inaccessible for those on lower income?

Yowanda-san said:
I suppose they are somewhat incompatible though but to stick to one ideology alone would perhaps suggest inflexibility, since it is within our nature to indulge ourselves when the opportunity presents itself. To retroactively correct myself, I might suggest that the latter is probably better applied in the circumstance that purchases are made for its own sake, though one might argue that by appending it as such, I am merely stating what is already obvious?
Do you mean that it's the buying, rather than the owning, that's important since what you buy both expresses that you value something and helps contribute to the production of it (in most cases)?

Also, I don't drink coffee or coffee related beverages, which always makes me feel a little bad when I watch something like "Is The Order A Rabbit?".
 
While we're still taking the mick out of that typo, I'll have a half-double decaffienated half-caf, with a twist of lemon.
 
Yowanda-san said:
I don't think buying so matters as much as owning actually. Sure it provides important feedback to the production committee but really, I think it's possibly to needlessly indulge yourself even if your possessions came to you free. I mean, imagine pulling out a hundred books from a skip, it would be a great find if you were a bibliophile though it probably wouldn't mean as much as finding a single book that you really wanted instead.
I'm not sure my feelings would be entirely positive if I found Yotsuba volume 13 in a skip, I'd have to wonder who put it there and why (also, why am I rummaging through an apparently magic skip?).

I guess if you did find a hundred books and really loved one of them that you hadn't heard of before then it'd become a prized possession. If you already possess something then it's easier for it to become a prized possession. Something you really wanted but haven't really had before could turn out to be a disappointment. I guess it's a risk either way, you could spend too much time/resources on sub-standard possessions or miss out on something great because you were focussed on what you thought you wanted.
 
People should support the industry as much as they possibly can. If that falls short of how much anime they watch, then (if it isn't on crunchy roll/netflix) you can't really blame people for ruining the industry by pirating.
 
Not entirely sure if I'm understanding what you just posted there, Blackblade, but are you suggesting that it's okay to pirate anime if you're not able to afford it?

Because if you are, that's the very boldest definition of theft.

One of my biggest buttons. Nobody pirating anime gets to call themselves a fan, as far as I'm concerned.
 
HdE said:
Not entirely sure if I'm understanding what you just posted there, Blackblade, but are you suggesting that it's okay to pirate anime if you're not able to afford it?

Because if you are, that's the very boldest definition of theft.

One of my biggest buttons. Nobody pirating anime gets to call themselves a fan, as far as I'm concerned.
Pretty sure I suggested the same thing earlier in the thread too. black1blade also said:

People should support the industry as much as they possibly can
which seems pretty fair to me. People who legitimately can't afford to buy things paying no-one for digital copies of said things they can't afford has zero effect. It's the people who can afford to buy things but choose to pirate instead who have a negative effect. Of course, if we all lived in magic land where there are full time jobs for everyone, hard work is truly rewarded and the cost of living is so low as to afford everyone ample spending money there'd be no excuse for not paying. But we don't, we live in an incredibly unequal society in terms of wealth distribution and I certainly don't fell aggrieved that someone much less well off than me has gotten something for free when I've paid for it. Because firstly they're much less well off than me and secondly I know that's very unlikely to have been their choice to be that poor.
 
HdE said:
One of my biggest buttons. Nobody pirating anime gets to call themselves a fan, as far as I'm concerned.

I'll have to counter that one. I make no bones about the fact that I do pirate anime sometimes. I'm not proud of it and I would like to stop but the fact of the matter is I don't have money to waste. I have a low amount of disposable income, just £10 a week that I get from my grandparents. I spend a hefty chunk of that money on anime, I like to buy sets if and when I can. However, due to having such a low amount of income and a lot of sets being quite a bit more than that, it makes blind buying pretty damn hard. If I bought one set and it was a dud, it could be about a month's worth of income wasted. Even if I sold it I would probably only make back a fraction of what I bought it for. Crunchy roll and other steaming sites aside, most of which only have more recent shows, it can be hard to decide what to buy other than looking up brief trailers or reading reviews but even then either of those might not be completely representative of the show. By pirating the show, you know if you like it or not. I wouldn't have ever bought sets like Madoka, Bersek or Cowboy Bebop if I hadn't had seen them through other means. As I say, I don't feel proud or happy about the situation, and I've promised myself as soon as I have a decent paying, full time job, I will buy every show I've pirated if it is available. However, until then, you'd say I wouldn't be considered a fan of shows that I desperately want to buy? People who have a decent income and still pirate are ****** scumbags but people who pirate as a way to see if they like a show before buying it as they don't have money to waste are slightly more justified in my book. That's just my 2 cents anyway.

Something else I will ask about too is how people feel about buying used anime. I mean, it's still acquiring anime through a means that means that the creators don't profit from. Is this frowned upon too?
 
I think the used market is fine. It's trading a finite number of products in a way which encourages early adopters (plenty of people only buy a lot on release because they know they can shift the duds later; they'd buy less if they had to be more cautious). And at the same time, it provides a way for those people on low income or people who wouldn't have bought a series new anyway to try something out. Perhaps they'll end up a fan. The premium model and a healthy used goods trade complement one another in a natural way. It's kinda scummy when people eBay their free replacement BDs of Durarara!! though :D

The biggest problem with the logic that it's fine for those who cannot afford a luxury product like anime to steal it is that people are often terrible judges of their own situations. It's understandable how someone without a penny to their name would be more tempted to watch illegally (though I really wish they'd consider streaming with ads if at all possible as it costs nothing and benefits the creators all the same) but frankly, a lot of the people I know who say things like that are loaded and just keep pushing the idea of what 'earning enough' actually is back without ever getting there. I've seen people on generous salaries genuinely complaining they have no money when faced with the idea of buying something that can easily be bootlegged, while people who scrape by would barely know what to do with themselves if they ever had that much disposable income to play with. I know I'm not the 'poverty police' and everyone has their own circumstances, but a lot of the people who say they can't afford anime are magically able to afford lavish holidays, cosplay trips and expensive figures (or whatever else cannot be pirated so easily). It's a matter of priorities for some people, and it's a shame because it muddies the water and makes it harder to support the truly needy.

R
 
IncendiaryLemon said:
Something else I will ask about too is how people feel about buying used anime. I mean, it's still acquiring anime through a means that means that the creators don't profit from. Is this frowned upon too?

The main difference between buying used copies and pirating, is that there's a finiteness involved. If you go into CEX and buy a secondhand copy of Spirited Away, that copy is then no longer available for anyone to purchase. There are one fewer second hand copies of Spirited Away available for purchase. But if you torrent or download Spirited Away, that's not an issue. A torrent can issue an infinite number of copies to whoever wants one. A torrent or download doesn't cease to exist just because one person has taken it. You're creating more copies rather than just trading the ownership of one copy from one person to another, drawn out of a pool of a limited number of copies.

TL; DR. For example if there's 500 copies of Spirited Away in the country. George decides he wants one. Fred decides he doesn't want his any more and gives it to George. There are still 500 copies of Spirited Away, but now George has one instead of Fred. But if instead of Fred giving George his copy, he duplicates it and gives the duplicate to George, there are now 501 copies and both of them have one.
 
There are quite a few shows that you couldn't realistically get new copies of so I don't think any reasonable person would object to trading in used copies of shows. I know there's been a long running debate about used game sales and it has been quite interesting but I think that eliminating the sale of used items is a little too unfair to customers and bit too favourable to publishers. One of the good things about the debate over used games is that companies do seem to be trying to give more value to those who purchase new, it doesn't always work out but at least there's some effort being made to try and create more options and fairer solutions.

I tend to try and buy things new but it's mostly just personal preference. Still, if I didn't buy anything used then I wouldn't have Azumanga Daioh and I might not be the "cute girls doing cute things" fan I am today (hey, it's a good thing... I think).

I think Rui made a really good point about the way people perceive their wealth and disposable income. I know I begrudge every penny I spend on food, clothing and such because I need it to buy anime (I'm probably not joking as much as I should be). A Crunchyroll subscription really isn't that expensive, you'd maybe have to cut back on a couple of your favourite drinks but you'd get a lot in return and you'd be contributing.

As for pirating to buy, I'm not really going to complain too much as long as you stick to it and absolutely avoid anything with a legal streaming option. Ideally everything would have some way to sample it, even if it's only a couple of episodes before you have to pay but since that's not the case I guess I can understand people being cautious. Still, I'm not sure it's exactly acceptable since you'll likely end up funding people who are basically doing nothing but stealing. It's also a little shaky since you have to decide just how much you allow yourself to watch before you're paying for a show. If you watch the whole thing but at the end feel you didn't enjoy it and wouldn't want to own it then I still think it'd be unfair to avoid paying (you could always buy it then sell your copy as used, I suppose).

I wonder who decided to call it "Piracy" anyway, I guess Pirates are technically bad but from a fiction point of view they're also cool. It wouldn't surprise me if some people were at least partly influenced by that, though it's also kind of a sad thought.
 
Smeelia said:
Still, I'm not sure it's exactly acceptable since you'll likely end up funding people who are basically doing nothing but stealing.
Paying someone for illegal copies is usually referred to as bootlegging rather than piracy, and I'd never condone anyone doing that. I think what most people are talking about here is filesharing where no money changes hands.

And really, I think you and Rui are making arguments blackblade and myself have already made clear we agree with - That people who can afford to pay should be. But you almost seem to be denying the existence of people who really can't afford to buy anime - These arguments do sound a bit like "no-one's really that badly off" which is most definately not the case.
 
ayase said:
Paying someone for illegal copies is usually referred to as bootlegging rather than piracy, and I'd never condone anyone doing that. I think what most people are talking about here is filesharing where no money changes hands.
Well, I was also including the potential for the sites providing piracy options to gain money through advertising and such in that you're not necessarily directly paying them but you're contributing (in a similar way to contributing to the anime industry by watching ad supported free legal streams).

ayase said:
And really, I think you and Rui are making arguments blackblade and myself have already made clear we agree with - That people who can afford to pay should be. But you almost seem to be denying the existence of people who really can't afford to buy anime - These arguments do sound a bit like "no-one's really that badly off" which is most definately not the case.
I was more just giving my view on things, I'm not sure I was saying all that much that was new and I wasn't specifically directing it at anyone. I know I didn't mention it but I did agree with your earlier post.

Still, I think it's a stretch to say we're suggesting that "no-one's really that badly off", after all you need pretty much the same basic equipment to watch a free legal stream as you do to watch an illegal one so if you have that then you're already better off than some. I kind of figured that my post implied that I was only talking about people who can afford some form of recreation in the first place (I'd say "luxuries" but I hesitate to use that word because I do think people are entitled to some form of entertainment and recreation as part of a basic standard of living).

If it makes you feel better, I'd say I take more of a "don't hate the Pirates, hate the Piracy" attitude. I mean, I'd maybe hate obnoxious Pirates but it'd be because they're obnoxious. I think people are generally more likely to turn to Piracy out of ignorance rather than maliciousness (if that's the right word), although maybe that's an optimistic viewpoint based on a limited sample.
 
Smeelia, I'm perfectly fine with people giving their views and contrary to popular belief I don't talk with the intention of trying to shut people down. More and varied opinions being stated and debated is what these forums need, so please don't ever feel like you shouldn't do exactly that.

I generally just forget ads exist because one terrible thing I do in fact do to deprive people of a living is use an adblocker. How long that particular get-around can last in the age of the commercial 'net I don't know.

I don't really think the argument that people should be able to afford anime if they have a home computer and internet connection really holds up in the modern day and age any more than suggesting that people with a fridge and electricity are well off enough to not be using food banks. Computers and the internet have got to the point where they're an almost unavoidable part of everyday lives - When I was on the dole I had to use the Jobcentre's online system to apply for jobs, so they pretty much presume everyone has internet access now however poor they are - if they don't they have to go into the Jobcentre or libraries to use theirs. A basic PC doesn't cost much more than a fridge or a cooker now anyway.
 
Fairly recently I was using an illegal streaming site and they had some kind of anti adblock tech where they stopped my stream and a message popped up saying "we need ads for revenue blah blah.." and also informed me I had lost some kind of site specific points. I thought that was well cheeky of them! Needless to say I did not disable adblock, I just went on a different site. It does make me wonder though, if these guys can afford anti adblock tech why can't CR? Although I have been a paying subscriber for a while now so maybe they do.

So yeah I do "illegally" stream sometimes. But only really to try things, or if it's not available legally. If I do end up enjoying something I definitely try to support it through legal means at some point. If I don't enjoy it, I don't feel guilty about making no effort to support it. But obviously that won't be any kind of long series, as if I make it all the way through then I must have liked it to some degree.

Though to be honest 95% of the time I just stick almost exclusively to CR, I pay the subscription, it's convenient, and it's got plenty stuff. Everything needs to start being released on CR. It's only a matter of time before CR becomes such a major player they start commissioning their own anime, nexflix style, right? That'd be interesting.
 
I'm surprised more sites don't restrict ad block. From my time working at a streaming company, where we were required to interrupt the service with audio ads as part of our license, anyone using Adblock would simply be unable to use the site.

Re. CR commissioning series - depends to what extent? Financial backing to Japanese companies - likely. Godawful American 'anime' style animation that has been created specifically for the service? I really hope not.

Isn't that part of what killed Tokyopop manga, because they started trying to publish homegrown stuff that nobody actually wanted?
 
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